The Darkness

The Darkness was a mysterious thing. It came when it wanted; there was no pattern to its sinister visits. The Darkness was a shadow, a shadow that would bring all your nightmares to life. If the shadow caught you in its embrace, all your fears came true, and your fear would kill you. Fear is what it feeds on; it travels back and forth around the world. It’s always leaving when the people figured out a way to defeat it, and if they didn’t figure out a way to defeat it, you’d never hear from them again. Only people who could figure out it wasn’t real, but just your imagination, just an illusion, would survive. But fear is a wonderful and horrible thing, it can save you, but it can also be the end of you.
This is the story of the end of the Darkness, but also the end of Atlantis. Atlantis was a rich society, they were brilliant, educated, and far more advanced than any could imagine, but even the Darkness can get you when your light dies.
Sita and Lestate were sitting together under the stars, whispering their words of love to each other. They had been together for years, but they had just recently decided to tell their parents when Lestate finally asked Sita to be his bride. Tonight was the night. “Te amour, my darling,” whispered Lestate. Sita smiled, but before she could say a thing, there came a huge bolt of lightning striking the earth right in front of them. The Darkness had come. Everyone had thought it was a legend, but it was true. The legend said that when a bolt of lightning touched the Earth, it signaled the arrival of the Darkness. The legend also said, the day It came, was the last day of Atlantis and all of its inhabitants unless they succumbed to the chaos of the darkness and let it make them mad.
The two got up; they knew what they had to do. It was time. They looked at each other and kissed, “Goodbye, my love, I shall see you in the next world.” They embraced and started for the palace. Everyone was there, dressed in their finery. All looked gloomy and sad, because all of them knew it was the end.
The soldiers had started the bombs. The city’s plan was once the darkness was on the island, they would blow up the pillars that held up the island, and destroy the Darkness. The people knew they wouldn’t survive, but they couldn’t figure out any other way to stop the Darkness. They had 15 minutes until the bombs went off.
Sita and Lestate were the first to see the Darkness. “It’s coming,” whispered frightened Sita, clinging to Lestate. They braced themselves. At first there was nothing but the shadow all around. Then their nightmares came true. Their nightmares were all in their heads but they didn’t know that, they were too scared to think logically. Sita, saw her mother, she was slowly gliding towards her, with a knife in her hand.
“You killed me,” her mother cried, “now, you shall pay!” She saw Lestate next to her mother smiling with evil intentions. His beautiful green eyes gleaming madly and his sweet smile turned into a wicked grin. He held the hand of a stunning girl who had wanted him for years, but whom he had rejected. He looked on as her worst nightmare came true. Her mother ran towards her, aiming the knife at her daughter’s chest, while all Sita could do was sob with the betrayal of her one true love.
Lestate, meanwhile, was fighting his own demons, in his own nightmare. Sita was pregnant, and beautiful with the glow of the expecting mother. She was walking slowly by the ocean, in a beautiful white dress, low-cut, with sparkling jewels all around the collar, enhancing her olive skin, and with her long black hair flowing on her shoulders. She smiled at him, and waved. Everything seemed perfect to him, it was his dream come true. Then, he noticed something in the water. It was dark, and it scared him. But he couldn’t think of what it was. ‘What is it?’ he thought. ‘What….?’ Then he realized it for what it was, it was the Darkness coming to get his bride, and their unborn child. “Sita! NO!” He ran towards them, trying to save his world before it died. But he was too late, he lay sobbing as Sita’s screams echoed in his head.
All around the city, people were crying, running frantically, screaming, as their fears plagued them. All of them were terrified, scared of their own selves. Not realizing, they weren’t fighting the Darkness, they were fighting what the Darkness brought out in them; themselves. Just before the bombs went off, Sita woke up from her nightmare world long enough to look around and see her real world one last time. She realized it had all been a dream, it was not real, but then she saw Lestate lying next to her, motionless. That’s when her heart just died. She looked up at the Darkness coming to consume her again, and smiled when she heard the tick of the timer going off.

This is...interesting. Not sure if I have a better word, but it's interesting.

The storyline is different in its own way I suppose (shadows are feared in most stories and Atlantis is often written about, but I don't think I've seen them combined). But I don't really feel much for the characters. I feel their regret, but I'm not very empathetic to them.
Otherwise, it does jump around a bit. It seems like it's narrated by an unseen person, but then suddenly narrated by the couple.

I'd suggest working on those issues.

Good luck.

This was quite a different kind of story. It started off well, I enjoyed the first bit. But then it went into the part about Atlantis and I found myself becoming less interested. I think your initial idea was a good one, but it didn't fit well with the Atlantis one. Maybe if you set it somewhere else I would have been able to connect to it a bit more.
Another thing was that you didn't really build te story enough for me to become attched to the characters. If you had added another paragraph to describe something about the two characters, then I would have felt more into the story.
I hope I've helped you with your story

Such an overwhelming amount of negativity! How did you manage to compact all of that into one vignette? It boggles the mind (but at the same time isn't very surprising, coming from someone whose username is "brokeninpieces" ).

You start off by describing the Darkness, the Shadow, this primeval, horrible thing, that seems too awful to actually ever exist - more like an intangible concept, a disease of not the flesh but the spirit. That, cheesy wording included, is the feeling I got from that first paragraph. This set up the rest of the story for me: a story about someone facing their suffering or trauma. Then I got to the bit about the apocalypse. That's when I was REALLY surprised, quite shocked even: would you really write a short story about the Atlanteans being doomed by their negative feelings? A story of this calibre on YWS? No freakin' way.

But then the story goes somewhere... else. Again, I was surprised, because I'm usually pretty good about predicting plot turns, but this threw me completely off course. So what exactly is the Darkness? Is it some kind of a creature, then? It must be, since the people of Atlantis wanted to kill it with bombs. If that's the case, your story ends up teaching a very strange lesson: that fear, pain, all those wonderful things are physical concepts and it is very possible to destroy them with conventional means. Like bombs. -- wouldn't it be nice if that were true? But it's not, which leads me to ask: what were you hoping to accomplish with this story?

My theory is, as theories go, quite simple. The story is a fantasy for something (ostensibly, seeing as this is the Fantasy forum), or, to be more precise, a fantasy of making others suffer for the ultimate goal: the destruction of all negative feelings in the world, it seems. Unfortunately, we still have negative feelings today, so clearly Atlantis must've sunk for a different, much less noble reason.

OR! Or this could be a very clever metaphor for drug use. I'd be surprised if you intended this. Feelings, both negative and positive, CAN be destroyed by physical means, by means of taking a particular sort of psychotropic drug. The people of Atlantis end up dying, which follows the metaphor: in their attempt to destroy negative feelings they've destroyed themselves, burnt out by the drug. See? It works out.

Either way, well done on posting a grammatically correct story, at the very least. I can't be sure whether you intended that bit I outlined in the paragraph up above this one or not, so I can't say what I really feel about this piece. If intended to be taken at face value, it's strange, incoherent, and lacks a visible goal. If intended as a metaphor for drugs or some other wonderful thing that I can't be pushed to think about, it is very clever and original. Whatever the case may be, good job. Keep on writing, and good luck.

Your servant,
cC

I didn't find any outstanding grammatical errors, which I'm usually apt to spot, but I felt like this was trying to be mysterious, but was a little overt. It needs more explanation, but some parts could be more vague. I know that's really ambigious constructive criticism, but I'm torn.

Develop exposition a little more. What is Atlantis? Is it the same Atlantis of legend that was swallowed by the sea? If not, I'd change the name because it sounds like an allusion, but I can't see too much of connection. Why are there bombs? Why didn't the bombs get mentioned earlier? What's going on with her mother? Why does she want to kill her? Why would she imagine that? Also, what happened to Lestate? Why was he motionless? Did he kill himself? Why did she wake up? What jolted her back to the real world?

I feel like you have something interesting here, but you need to develop it to find a deeper meaning.

Hullo. ^^

Rather off-the-cuff, I feel left hanging and hung. Hung, in the positive sense that you've set up the air of the thing with such dour-glower and gloom, that it feels tangible. Er, but then, I'm hanging. In the first paragraph, you set a prologue, and something like a prophecy of doom. From there, however, you introduce three to four characters, the aforementioned's backstories, try to fit in present action, dreams; bounce through two characters' heads (and subconscious fears)--and then abruptly end it all. When it's hardly got a breath to begin in; and certainly when the reader has not had the space to get a breath in. ^_^;

It feels like an apt write-up of a story--as if you'd strung together all you wanted to tell so that you, as the author, had your main action, and your tone, in one place. But as far as telling a story, it neither presented a problem to be solved, nor a character to struggle through or solve it. I would be curious to know why these creatures are trapped in a world threatened by a something that is Dark. But what is the Darkness? Is it a feeling? A weather pattern? Fear?

Why do we need to know that Lestate and the girl have been together before, and now want to be married? That could, I suppose, add to the tension--if their being together were now threatened. But with how quickly it all occurs, there never seems truly to be the possibility that they could live or survive.

All in all, you've hit the note of gloom like Chopin hits melancholy in his E minor etude. But it's a single note. Without the added chords of character, and arc, I only get a fragment of a story--and with just a piece, I'm left without a story thread to follow. Oy, but if you hit gloom as your base, and slowed down--perhaps taking each of the paragraphs following the Darkness prologue, and expanding them into sections (or chapters), you could have an intriguing short story. The main bit right now is that the characters all seem to have finished their story before it even begins.

Anyhow, if you've any questions, try me by PM, da?


IMP

you're a very good writer

Well, it's kinda sad, and it sounds very cinematic. I can almost hear swelling violin music, followed by a muffled explosion. I have a few questions about this, namely, "is the darkness still alive?" and "is there to be more later?" It sounds like the back-story for a movie. it sounds good, and a bit unfinished. keep it up.

Thanks wolfman, and I've been thinking about it, but I haven't decided yet. Any ideas?